


Rude Awakenings

by Arcane_Apparition



Series: Vagabonds in This Apocalypse [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, Survivor Guilt, starts with the pair waking up and working their way through the commonwealth, this is a two sole story here folks, with shenanigans in between
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 17:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18642406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcane_Apparition/pseuds/Arcane_Apparition
Summary: “Come on...come on!” She yells, desperate. Finally she hits the right one, and his pod starts to creak open. She waits, holding her breath, until the door is open completely. He doesn’t move, and it feels like her heart drops to her stomach. She manages to stand, legs shaky and unstable to the point she has to hold onto the edge of his pod for support.“Nate…?” She reaches out to him with a shaking hand, fingers brushing against his shoulder. He slumps over, head lolling to one side. She can’t help the tears that well up in her eyes as she whimpers, a pathetic sound that echoes off the metal walls around her. She’s gentle as she takes his hand in her own, trying not to focus on how wrong his skin seems to feel now. It’s too normal, too close to feeling alive despite the dark stain blossomed across the front of his vault suit.“I’m sorry Nate. I’m so sorry.” She apologizes as she slips his wedding ring off his finger. “I’ll find who did this. I’ll find Shaun. I promise.”~~Abigail Keegan and Miriam Sutton-Varley are two women out of place and out of their time. Their husbands are dead, and Abby's son is gone. The two have to work together to make it in the harsh new world waiting for them.





	1. Rude Awakenings

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU with two Sole survivors written between my friend Kaitlyn and myself. It's going to diverge from canon in obvious ways, but we do try to stick to the game story line in some ways. Abby's story is closer in line with what we are given in the game, while Miri's diverges and has a built story line of her own.

        When Abby woke up, the first thing she can think is that she can't breathe. Metal walls press around her, and a bone-deep cold makes her teeth chatter.

        _‘Where am I?’_ She thinks, starting to panic. Her mind is drawing blanks, her only focus is that her chest burns. What happened to her? How had she gotten into this? She starts to beat her hand against the metal, nails clawing at it but finding no purchase to get a hold of.

        Suddenly, the metal hatch around her starts to open with a screech so loud it makes her ears ring. She struggles to blink away the spots after she’s blinded by harsh fluorescent lights above her. When her vision clears, she takes in the other metal tubes around her. She looks ahead and catches sight of her husband, slumped forward in a prison of his own, and all at once her memories rush forward.

        The bombs dropped.

        Vault-Tec took them in with smiles and promises of safety. They lied to them, locking them away in some kind of cryo-chambers. People...someone had woken them up before. Nate was…

        Shaun was _gone_.

        A new panic sets in, fear making her stomach twist as she goes to climb down from her pod. As soon as she puts weight on her leg her knee gives out under her, sending her crumbling to the ground with a cry. Her legs burn, like she’d fallen waist deep into a mound of fire ants. It feels like every nerve ending in her legs is firing back up all at once.

        Abby bites back another cry as she pushes herself up, and uses her arms to drag herself towards the control panel to Nate’s pod. She tries to tell herself that he was okay, that she’d just imagined all that happened. That the man with the scarred face and people in hazmat suits were just part of some kind of messed up dream she had.

        She doesn’t want to believe that the too-loud gunshot had been real.

        She forces herself up onto her knees, ignoring the ache and starts to jab at every button she can find.

        “Come on...come on!” She yells, desperate. Finally she hits the right one, and his pod starts to creak open. She waits, holding her breath, until the door is open completely. He doesn’t move, and it feels like her heart drops to her stomach. She manages to stand, legs shaky and unstable to the point she has to hold onto the edge of his pod for support.

        “Nate…?” She reaches out to him with a shaking hand, fingers brushing against his shoulder. He slumps over, head lolling to one side. She can’t help the tears that well up in her eyes as she whimpers, a pathetic sound that echoes off the metal walls around her. She’s gentle as she takes his hand in her own, trying not to focus on how wrong his skin seems to feel now. It’s too normal, too close to feeling alive despite the dark stain blossomed across the front of his vault suit.

        “I’m sorry Nate. I’m so sorry.” She apologizes as she slips his wedding ring off his finger. “I’ll find who did this. I’ll find Shaun. I promise.”

        It takes her a minute to gather herself and finally take in her surroundings. She’d been so focused on Nate and hadn’t realized that none of the other pods seemed to be opening. Why was hers opened? Were the openings spread out? She goes to the pod to the right and peers in the small window, seeing that it is Mrs. Wilken’s pod. A friendly older lady that had lived across the street from Abby and Nate back in Sanctuary. She’d brought them a casserole when they’d first moved to the neighborhood.

        She presses the emergency eject button on her console, and there’s a loud beep that rings through the room.

_**SYSTEM FAILURE.** _

        She repeats this process again and again, going from one cryo-pod to the next. Each time she tries to open it, she’s gets the same response. Technical failure and an obnoxious beep. It isn’t until she loops back around towards her own pod that she notices the terminal mounted on the wall.

        _‘Maybe the system needs rebooted or something?’_ She thinks as she walks over, grateful to see the screen come alive after she hits a button on the keyboard. She skims through a lot of it, reading notes from Vault engineers and profiles of the people in this wing of the vault. When she gets to the status page of the cryo-pods, she feels her stomach drop.

        Critical system failure. Oxygen supply cut off. Besides her own pod that read ‘opened’, every other pod was listed as failed. Power had long since been cut off to all the other pods, effectively suffocating everyone else and turning their pods into metal tombs.

        Abby’s knees shake, threatening to give out on her again, and all she can do is slump down against the wall. She feels sick and numb, surrounded by the bodies of everybody from her old life. Maybe she was trapped too. Maybe all the doors were locked, and she’d have to die from dehydration.

        “Fuck!” She yells at nothing, gripping at her hair as she starts to cry again. If she had to die, why couldn’t she have suffocated with everybody else? Why did she have to wake up at all? Why did she have to wake up just to be surrounded by the dead. All she can do is hug her knees to her chest and cry.

 

        Miriam’s legs were shaky as she climbed out of the cryo-tube, and she was cold, teeth-chattering, hands-shaking - cold.

        Memories flooded back, she had been subdued upon entering the chamber room. Working in the military had its benefits: stable pay, jump started career, and also, knowing what experimental cryogenic chambers looked like. “Decontamination chamber, my ass” she says, her voice more hoarse than anticipated, rubbing her chest as if that would relieve the burning that had settled in.

        _‘Kero,’_ she thinks, looking around at the other Cryo-tubes that hadn’t opened. Right beside hers was Kero’s, closed, frozen over. Had everyone died in there? She presses the emergency eject button on Kero’s pod: “System Failure” rings out overhead. Finding a terminal, she reads on, oxygen supply was cut off one by one in the room - she was the only one left. Miri looks back at her husband’s pod, seemingly sleeping but never to wake up.

        “You’re kidding me,” she says, pressing her forehead against the cold glass. Was she relieved? The guilt crept up on her for even thinking that. She didn’t want to even look at the other pods, was she alone? Could she even get out?

        Miri’s head whipped around, hearing quiet sobbing in, what she could only assume was the hallway. She pushed herself off of the pod, not even giving a second glance to Kero.

        Tentatively stepping up the few stairs and into the hallway, she looks to the right in horror. _‘More Cryo-tubes? How many of us did they con into this?’_ she thinks, walking through the entrance. The subs started to get louder, she looks over the her side only to find a blonde woman, slumped against the wall with her head in her hands. “Um, hello?”

 

        Abby jumps at the sudden voice. Her crying had covered up the sounds of footsteps approaching, and for half a second she thinks she’s hallucinating the woman standing in front of her. She blinks a few times, trying to blink away the tears and see if she vanished when she stopped looking at her.

        She still stands there, head half cocked to the side, and Abby finally accepts that she isn’t suffering from some kind of oxygen-deprivation induced hallucination.

        “Uh, h...hi.” Abby says, wiping her face with the sleeves of her vault suit, leaving a stain of runny makeup and snot on the fabric. She scrambles to her feet and gives her a shaky smile. “I thought everyone was….I’m glad to see another face. I’m Abby.”

        “Miriam. Miri for short. I’m glad to see somebody else made it, everybody else died in their pods.” She says and the words make Abby wince a little. Her hallway of pods hadn’t been any different it seems, and it still made her uncomfortable to think about the fact every one of her neighbors were forced to suffocate in their pods. “A Vault-wide system failure except for two pods seems….odd.”

        “We were just the....lucky ones I guess?” Lucky certainly didn't feel like the right word to her. From where she's standing, she doesn't feel all that lucky being alive.

        “Maybe.” The tone of her voice makes it seem like she thinks otherwise, but she doesn’t say anything else. She starts to look around, taking in their surroundings. “We need to find a way out of here.”

        Getting a better look at the woman in front of her, Abby gets the sense that she recognizes her. She’s a good head taller than Abby is, if not more. Her hair is a dark red, tied back in a bun that’s starting to lose strands here and there. All in all, Miri looks a lot more put together than Abby feels at this point. She's sure she's nothing more than a mess of snot and runny make-up by now.

        “Do you think it’s safe up there?” She asks, the flash from the bombs still bright in her mind. _‘Will there be anything left?’_   She thinks, but is too afraid to ask. Too afraid of what answer she might get. Miri turns on a heel and starts down the hall without so much of a warning, forcing Abby to jog to keep up with her stride.

        “We won’t know that until we get up there. We either deal with what’s outside, or sit around here and starve to death. Take your pick.” She says bluntly. Neither fate sounds ideal at this point, but Abby keeps quiet and trails behind her.

 

        It takes some time for the pair to find their way to the Vault door. They scrounge around for supplies in each room they pass, only managing to find a couple backpacks and bottles they fill at a water fountain as they pass by it. Clean water might be a scarce commodity for all they know, Miri explains, and it’s better they prepare ahead of time.

        They find skeletons of some of the Vault-Tec scientists as they explore, and a new well of panic builds up in Abby’s chest at the implications of that. She’s afraid to ask how long they’d been underground; everything feels like it happened just yesterday. Miri is stoic, expression set as she takes the pip-boy off the corpse’s arm.

        “We’ll probably need this to override any system lock downs.” Miri shrugs when Abby gives her a horrified look, snapping the device onto her own arm. Once it’s in place and booting up, Miri starts to walk again with Abby in tow, walking carefully around the skeleton.

        Much to Abby’s horror, there are giant cockroaches waiting for them in one of the rooms they pass through. She does her best to try and keep away from them, nearly tripping over her own feet when one of them take a flying leap in her direction. Miri swats the roach back to the ground before stomping down on it, grinding it into the ground.

        “Giant roaches? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Abby breathes, but Miri doesn’t say anything. She just scrapes as much of the bug guts she can off the bottom of her shoe onto a nearby pole before continuing onward.

        It isn’t until they reach the Overseer’s office that they are able to stop, and Abby has a minute to try and get her thoughts in order. Miri is quick to jump to the terminal, already scouting around for answers and a way out.

        “How do you know about all this? How do you know what to look for?” Abby asks, and Miri barely glances up at her.

        “Hm? It’s educated guesses mostly.” She says simply, as if the answer had been obvious. It isn’t until a brief pause that she seems like bothering to continue. “I was a scientist in the military. Research and development mostly. Some of this tech looks familiar to what we used.”

        “My...husband was in the military.” Abby says softly, looking at a stain on the metal wall just to keep her eyes on something. It still makes her chest ache, and the ring in her pocket feels like it weighs 100 pounds. The clicking of keyboard keys stalls for just a moment, before it picks back up again.

        “Mine was too.” Abby looks over at Miri as she says that, but she is looking at the screen again.

        “I’m sorry.” She offers, but all Miri does is grunt slightly, leaving Abby to scuff her boots on the ground.

        “Found the over ride.” She announces suddenly, and the door on the furthest wall starts to screech open, “We should be able to get to the vault entrance from here.”

        “I’m still not thrilled about what might be waiting for us.” Abby sighs, readjusting the backpack slung over her shoulder.

        “It's better than sitting down here waiting to starve to death. These Pip-boys have built in radiation detectors, so we’ll know immediately if the air is too dangerous for us.” Miri explains as she starts sifting through the contents of the desk, looking for anything that might be of use. “As for protection…”

        Abby looks over and sees Miri has a pistol in her hand, inspecting it before setting it down. She pulls another out from the drawer, as well as a few boxes of ammo. Her eyebrows raise as she watches her check to see if the guns are loaded, hands working the weapons with a practiced ease.

        “Why would a Vault Overseer need guns?” Abby asks, “Even the bodies of the guards we found only had nightsticks on them.”

        “They were worried about a revolt apparently. Being cooped up in a place like this is bound to make people paranoid. Vault-Tec apparently cut communications with this vault too, not sure why, but that probably didn’t help the situation here any.” Miri explains, checking the chambers of the pistols before standing. She tosses a box of ammo into her backpack, then slides the gun and a spare box across the table. “Here, take this. You know how to use one?”

        “Not...really.” Abby answers, grabbing the ammo box and putting it away before carefully picking the gun up. She holds it gingerly, half expecting it to go off at the slightest wrong touch. “I mean, I used to shoot with my brother but-“

        “Aim down the sights, pull the trigger when you want to shoot something. Don’t aim it at me or yourself.” Miri says, sounding like an exasperated adult breaking down an explanation for a toddler. “That’s just as a precaution anyways. Like I said, better to be safe than sorry.”

        “At least now I won’t have to get too close to any giant bugs.” She says, trying to sound cheery and find some kind of silver lining. Miri scoffs, shaking her head before taking the lead again and walking out the door. Abby tucks the gun into the belt of her vault suit before following behind her again.

        A few more dead bugs later, and they reach the main elevator to take them to the surface. Miri goes to the terminal, but not before stooping down and picking up something from another skeleton in a lab coat.

        “Here.” Abby looks up, barely reacting in time to catch what she’d tossed her way. It was another Pip-Boy. This one's covered in dust, but doesn't seem to be damaged. “Better for you to have your own.”

        “Uh, thanks.” She turns it over in her hands, eyeing the clunky device before slipping it onto her arm and snapping it closed. She tries to rub the screen clean, but ends up smearing the dust around before hitting a few buttons. It takes a few tries, but the screen finally comes to life and starts to cycle through its loading screens. The sound of air hissing and metal screeching on metal makes her look up. Miri is tucking a cord back into her own Pip-Boy, and the grate around the elevator is opening.

        “You ready?” Miri asks, and Abby nods despite not feeling prepared at all. As much as she wants out of the metal tomb she’d woken up in, she’s terrified to see what the world has become. But, as Miri said, leaving was their only option now. They’d picked the vault clean of any useful supplies, they’d barely last more than a couple weeks before hunger got to them. They’re best chance for survival, and her best chance for finding Shaun, were out on the surface.

“Alright, let’s go.”


	2. Brave New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once they both have their bearings, they start walking again. They check the guard shacks that they pass, and Miri is able to stash away a few more boxes of pistol ammo before they move on. Skeletons lay where the entrance of the gate had once been, and she tries not to give them a second thought. Tries not to think about the people left outside to die, forced to watch their own demise come at them head on in the form of a giant mushroom cloud. Abby slows though, eyes on the ground as they pass. Her footsteps are careful, stepping around the skeletons instead of over, like she was worried about being disrespectful.
> 
> “They would’ve died fast.” Miri says, “The shock wave killed them first before the heat or radiation would’ve gotten to them. They barely had a chance to think.” She’s trying to offer her some peace of mind, but the words don’t sound as comforting as she thought they would.  
> ~~~  
> Finally finding their way outside the vault, sole survivors Abby and Miri make their way back to Sanctuary to see how much -or how little- of their old lives are left.

        The sun practically blinds Miri when the elevator brought them to the surface. She’d been expecting it to be bright, considering the fact her eyes were only used to the weak fluorescent lights of the Vault, but it was somehow worse than she’d been anticipating. It makes her eyes ache and water. Beside her Abby stumbles over her own feet, obviously not faring much better from the sudden assault.

        Her first thought when her vision comes back is that the world looks…dead. Plant life at first glance looks nonexistent, and the buildings they can see from this height look like they laid in shambles. The world they’d known was gone, that’s for sure. But a closer look and she saw it wasn’t a dead world really, just a different one. Plants had been killed, but mother nature was already in the process of taking things back for herself. The fence that had once kept the unauthorized away from the Vault entrance had all but been destroyed to nothing, crumbled like paper in the grip of large overgrown tree roots.

        Once they both have their bearings, they start walking again. They check the guard shacks that they pass, and Miri is able to stash away a few more boxes of pistol ammo before they move on. Skeletons lay where the entrance of the gate had once been, and she tries not to give them a second thought. Tries not to think about the people left outside to die, forced to watch their own demise come at them head on in the form of a giant mushroom cloud. Abby slows though, eyes on the ground as they pass. Her footsteps are careful, stepping around the skeletons instead of over, like she was worried about being disrespectful.

        “They would’ve died fast.” Miri says, “The shock wave killed them first before the heat or radiation would’ve gotten to them. They barely had a chance to think.” She’s trying to offer her some peace of mind, but the words don’t sound as comforting as she thought they would.

        “Oh.” She says, soft and sad. Miri shuffles a little, not sure what else to say, and instead turns to walk again. She hears Abby’s footfalls jogging behind her.

        Sanctuary is a mess. Houses are in ruins; some barely standing, a strong wind away from being blown over, and others are a rusted pile of mess altogether. The street is split from the years without maintenance, grass and roots sprouting up from the ground, making it a hassle to walk over. Debris is everywhere, metal carcasses of what had once been cars are spread out here and there as they pass.

        Abby suddenly breaks out into a sprint, darting past Miri. She goes to yell after her, but her question dies in her throat when she sees her run towards a Mr. Handy unit. The robot, though a little dinged and rusted here and there, was still dutifully taking care of the hedges in front of a damaged blue house.

        “Codsworth?”

        “As I live and breathe!” The Mr. Handy spun to look at the pair, his three optics narrowing and widening as if to try and figure out if he was really seeing them. “It’s….it’s really you, mum? Oh it’s so good to see you again!”

        “Codsworth you’re...you’re okay.” Abby sounds breathless, like her thoughts can’t keep up with her mouth, “Then that means...other people could be alive too…”

       “Of course I’m okay! You didn’t think a little radiation could deter the pride of General Atomic's International, now did you?” Codsworth boasts, sounding proud. Miri comes to stand beside Abby, arms crossed.

        “These things are built to last. I wouldn’t...don’t hang your hopes on finding other people just because Mr. Handy’s are still floating around.” She says, not wanting her to get her hopes too high. “Radiation isn’t going to affect bots like it would people.”

        “There could still be somebody though, there has to be.” She insists, and Miri can’t tell if she sounds hopeful or desperate at this point. The Mr. Handy unit looks Miri up and down.

        “Ah, I see you brought company! But where is your other half, mum?” He asks, and Abby’s face falls.

        “He...these people came into the Vault. Maybe you saw them come through here? They were armed, and a few of them looked like they were wearing….suits of some kind? Like, radiation suits?” Abby says as she rubs at her forehead. Her voice is strained, like she’s trying to put pieces of her memories back together.

        “Hmmm. No, I can’t say that I have. Only Ms. Rosa’s boy running around in his Halloween costume. More than a week early, mind you! I swear, the nerve that woman has to leave her brat unsupervised-”

        “So you’re saying you haven’t seen anybody else pass through? Maybe you heard voices or- or footsteps? Anything?”

        “No, I haven’t. I must say, you seem a little worse for wear right now mum. Come, let’s get you cleaned up before the sir comes home. Where….where did you say he was again?” Codsworth asks again.

        “He was killed, Codsworth. The…the people that broke into the Vault killed him and took Shaun.” Her voice is soft, shoulders slumping. Miri wants to say something, to try and make her feel better, but she can’t find the words.

        “No. No that can’t be the case.” Codsworth disagrees, “You must be in worse shape than I thought mum. You seem to be suffering from hunger-induced paranoia. 200 years without a proper meal will do that to a person, you know. Come on, I’ll whip up something for the two of you while we wait for the sir to return with young Shaun.”

        “This isn’t helping anything. We should get going.” Miri interjects finally. This conversation, forcing Abby to explain again and again what happened to her family, was just going to do more harm than good. Maybe radiation _had_ effected the bot more than she'd thought capable, or maybe it was just too much time and rust. But it seemed something had knocked the sensors loose in her Mr. Handy unit. “There’s no point-”

        “Wait wait. Codsworth did you say…..200 years?” Abby asks suddenly, eyes wide. “That can’t...is that even possible?”

        “We were suspended in Cryo-sleep so yeah, it’s very possible. If our life support systems had continued, we could have been in there even longer.” She shrugs. It wasn’t much of a surprise to Miri to hear how much time had passed. Their bodies had been preserved, and obviously enough time had passed for the radiation to die down in the immediate areas. Abby, on the other hand, wasn’t taking the news quite as well.

        “It’s been a little bit over 210, actually.” Codsworth explains. “Give or take a few years for the Earth’s rotation and any damage to the ole’ chronometer, I suppose. And that means you’re over two centuries late for dinner mum!” The bot let out a laugh, bits of static in his voice. Abby frowns and gives Miri a concerned glance before looking back at him.

        “Codsworth are you okay? You’re- you sound a little off?” She asks, tilting her head slightly. His laugh dies down, and there’s a moment of silence as he weighs her question.

        “I…I…” His gears whir loudly, before he practically droops in the air, “Oh mum, it’s been absolutely terrible around here! Two centuries with no one to talk to, no one to serve!”

        His cries catch both of them off guard. Despite the robotic tone to his voice, his sadness sounded almost human. Abby looks worked up and concerned, clearly unsure how to help him feel better, whereas Miri just feels uncomfortable. She knew Mr. Handy’s were supposed to be convincing as help, but she never realized they were programmed to be quite so...emotional. Were all the units this prone to being over the top, or was Abby’s just malfunctioning after 200 years?

        “I spent the first ten _years_ trying to keep the floors waxed, but nothing gets nuclear fallout out of vinyl wood. Nothing!” Codsworth laments, “And don’t get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed, empty house. Oh, and the car, mum! The car! How do you polish rust? How?!"

        “Hey, Codsworth stay with me, okay?” Abby tries to calm him, “Just calm down, and tell me what you know, alright?”

        “I don’t know much of anything, mum. The bombs came, and all of you had to leave in such a hurry. I was certain you and your family would be...dead.” His voice steadies, no longer wailing at this point.

        “Well I’m not. And I don’t think Shaun is either.” Abby says, perking up.

        “Abby-”

        “Miri I know you think it isn’t possible, but I just...I don’t think he’s dead.” She continues, sounding hopeful. “We made it, didn’t we? Why couldn’t Shaun have? We don't know when he was taken.”

         Miri wants to argue. She wants to point out that, logically, there are a lot of reasons why she might not find Shaun. That babies’ immune systems are weak, and who the hell knows what kind of viruses are lingering around nowadays. Or that even the slightest bit of radiation could do permanent damage. And all of that is if the people that took him didn’t have malicious intentions of their own for him.

        But the hopeful look on Abby’s face made her bite back her words. Logically, they were looking for a possibly non-existent needle in the world’s largest haystack, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to say that. She couldn't outright tell her that her baby was probably dead.

        “I...guess there could be a chance…” She sighs finally, rolling her shoulders. Abby practically bounces on her heels at that.

        “Exactly! We just need to know where to start.” She turns to Codsworth again, who also seems to have perked up, “Where do you think we should start Codsworth?”

        “Well, there are people on Concord as far as I know.” He says, “I got a glimpse at them before they chased me out.”

        “Okay...Okay. Concord then, that’s not that far from here.” Abby says with a nod and squares her shoulders, seeming to be driven by a sudden surge of determination, “We’ll start there.”

        “And I’ll hold down the fort here!” Codsworth exclaims eagerly, “Do be careful though mum. There are plenty of pests and ne’er-do-wells around nowadays, I feel it would be in your best interest to try and keep your distance from them.”

        “Will do, Codsworth.”

        “We’re just going to ask some questions, see if anybody has seen anything or noticed anyone that matches the kidnappers.” Miri adds, “No plans on sticking around if things get weird.”

        “Yeah, no. Definitely.” Abby nods, still bouncing from one foot to the other. The lead they have, no matter how flimsy it might be, seems to have given her a surge of energy. She’s eager to get moving again. Miri turns around, taking the lead once more and heading down the road towards the exit of Sanctuary. She hears the two exchange good-byes, before it sounds as though Abby is jogging to keep up with Miri’s pace.

        They’d get to Concord, ask questions if anybody was around, and find a place to hunker down before the sun sets for the night.


End file.
